-9winter shots. The same holds for a number of other fission products and
suggests an excellent way to conduct nuclear tests with a minimum of exposure to the population.
In addition to all of the limitations described in the last 2 para-
graphs of the preceding section on air beta concentration, one must add
uncertainties in the direction of fallout and its rate of descent.
Meteorological trajectories
(for constant altitude) are available for the
tests in 1953©) | 19577) ana 1962), but what we really need are the
upper-air fallout
(U.F.) trajectories which predict the deposition of
fallout along the ground.
Thyroid dose estimates from fission yields are given in Table 4.
Table 4
YEAR
OF TESTS
195] —
1952
1953
1955
1957
1958
1962
THYROID DOSE ESTIMATES FROM FISSION YIELD
KILOTON YIELD
EST. AV. INFANT
(1 APR - 31 OCT)
TH. DOSE (RAD)
18
0.4
64
1.6
282
6.3
84
2.0
3 YY
8.6*
57
1.4
?
1.0
These estimates could be recomputed independently if the yields
of the five tests of July 1962 were released.
The sum of their fission*
yields is indicated to be "less than" 110 kilotons ©) | but how much less
was not given.
For what it is worth (which may not be much), Table 4 pre-
dicts about 40 kilotons fission yield during July 1962.
There may be
legitimate security reasons for withholding this information.
* The 8.6 rad dose for 1957 was estimated from the calculated 1.0 rad dose
for 1962 and the air beta concentrations for 1962 & 1957 (see Table 3).
* Dunning states that about 1009) kilotons of fission was released prior to
1959 at the Nevada test site
.
The total f§}ssion + fusion) yield for
Nevada tests prior to 1959 was 1036 kilotons
.
Thus virtually all was
fission.